Best-selling historian Ellen Fitzpatrick tells the story of three remarkable women who set their sights on the Presidency. The arduous, dramatic quests of Victoria Woodhull (1872), Margaret Chase Smith (1964), and Shirley Chisholm (1972) illuminate today’s political landscape, shedding light on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for the Oval Office.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Fitzpatrick’s history is an urgent, crucial contribution… A book unlikely to calm any nerves, but which will at least put our gendered anxieties in historical perspective… Fitzpatrick’s smartly timed book should remind us not to let whatever history we make just pass us by. (Rebecca Traister New York Times Book Review 2016-03-15)

Fitzpatrick tells the compelling stories of three women who preceded [Hillary] Clinton’s quest [to become president]… Fitzpatrick is a worthy biographer, offering a rich, amply footnoted story of these quick-witted and resilient women. In a world where women were expected to demur, they lived large―and paid the price. One finishes the book believing that they wouldn’t have had it any other way. (Connie Schultz Washington Post 2016-02-26)

Terrific. (Jill Lepore New Yorker 2016-06-27)

Ellen Fitzpatrick breaks the second-highest glass ceiling: writing a history of political women that reads like a murder mystery while managing to elevate the office of president despite recent electoral buffoonery. It’s a neat trick that kept me turning pages to find out what happened next. Like the politicos whose audacity, gusto and brainpower she admires, Fitzpatrick is that entertaining… Those eager to curl up with a good read on a Saturday afternoon will find the hours passing quickly. They might also become eager to cheer for a female president―at last. (Elizabeth Cobbs Times Higher Education 2016-03-10)

Fitzpatrick’s engaging The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency implicitly questions the assumption that any rational woman could seriously believe that the White House was hers for the asking, by telling the entertaining, if ultimately depressing, stories of some women in the past who have failed. (Sarah Churchwell New Statesman 2016-03-04)

Why has it taken so long for a woman to be taken seriously when she runs for President of the United States? There are stories to be told about that and Presidential historian Ellen Fitzpatrick does so superbly in The Highest Glass Ceiling. Her account of the women who did, in fact, go for the top job makes for great reading as well as a much-needed filling of important gaps in American political history. This is a terrific book that is chock full of small tidbits that add up to important surprises for anyone who thinks they already know everything about presidential politics. (Jim Lehrer, former Executive Editor, PBS NewsHour)

Ellen Fitzpatrick’s wise and winning The Highest Glass Ceiling is destined to become the Profiles in Courage of the 2016 Presidential election, situating this year’s presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic field of bold female contenders, with special focus on the three who previously came closest―Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, and Shirley Chisholm. What enabled these women to ‘step out of context and into history,’ as a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote of Smith, to ‘shake it up, make it change,’ as Chisholm aimed to do? Fitzpatrick’s compelling portraits supply not just the how and when, but also the why, teaching valuable lessons that everyone who cares about American Presidential politics will be grateful to learn. (Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life)

Women’s quest for the U.S. presidency has been long and arduous―and Ellen Fitzpatrick, a superb scholar and writer, is the perfect author for this fascinating and overdue history. This book is a triumph, and an inspiration. (Theda Skocpol, Harvard University)

Found this book interesting, well researched and very engaging. I learned so much about the women described in the book as well as about the history of women in politics. Very relevant on today's election environment. I highly ecommend it.

The only time I could put this book down was when I needed to process the horrifying ways in which history repeats itself. Margaret Chase Smith dealing with Senator Joseph McCarthy is eerily similar to what's going on today with right wing bullies. And what Shirley Chisholm put up with, both from feminism's leading lights as well as Richard Nixon's dirty tricksters will take your breath away.

Wonderfully written book introducing us to three women presidential candidates from various eras in history. You come away from this read admiring the three women and the author who skillfully describes their quests, their challenges and their ultimate defeats.

The struggles of three past women presidential candidates serves as a warning to all voters as this election season, which will undoubtedly ratchet up hateful rhetoric, snide innuendo and dirty tricks to discredit yet another woman candidate. It remains to be seen whether the country has learned anything since 1920 when women got the vote. The next several months are sure to tell the story.